Christmas Vacation
It's Christmas break again. I'm not in school anymore so I don't get two or three weeks of time off like I used to, but I have enough time off from work to remind me what those days were like. Awful.
Both my parents worked. My siblings went to a babysitter, but I was old enough to stay home alone. Sounds like a good time, right? Maybe for the first day, but I was bored by day two. There wasn't much for an eleven-year-old girl to do by herself in a snowy Midwestern town. None of my friends lived nearby. Except Jerry, my secret boyfriend.
He was my secret boyfriend because everyone but me despised him. My best friend was jealous and angry when I told her Jerry was my boyfriend. She said he crawled out of a sewer. She put herself between us everytime Jerry came near me. She wore me out. So I lied to her. I told her Jerry dumped me.
My parents didn't like him, either. I've never been sure why. The only thing I can figure is that I was pretty young to have a boyfriend. Even so, it was a pure, innocent relationship. I would think they would've thought it was cute, at least a little. But they discouraged me from spending time with Jerry from the beginning. They never outright forbade it, they just made it clear with their dirty looks and their snide remarks that they strongly disapproved.
I fell in love with Jerry at summer school. (I didn't need the academic help; my parents wanted me to do something besides sit in front of a box fan and read all day.) I walked in to a classroom on the first day and there was Jerry. "Sit next to me," he said, and I did.
One afternoon, during a class project, Jerry and I were in the hallway alone when he kissed me. Not once, but twice.
We were inseparable after that. On a field trip, Jerry found a girl's watch. It had a blue stap with sailboats embroidered on it. Like a good boy, he took it to the teacher, who told him he could keep it. Jerry gave it to me.
When my parents saw it, they had a fit. They demanded I give it back. I didn't want to, but I obeyed.
Some time after summer school ended, Jerry showed up at my door. He brought me earrings and a necklace. Again, my parents demanded I return the gifts. They insisted Jerry must've stolen the jewelry since he was too young for a job. I argued that maybe he had allowance money or his mother had given them to him. But my parents had made up their minds that Jerry was a thief. They even thought he'd stolen the sailboat watch I'd witnessed him finding on the beach!
So many times I've wished I'd kept those gifts and spared Jerry a broken heart. I've wished I'd lied to my parents and hidden the jewelry someplace, pretending I'd returned it. I wasn't raised to lie to my parents, however. The next time Jerry appeared at my door, I reluctantly gave his presents back. The look on his face absolutely tore me. I hated myself for putting that look there. I hated my parents, too.
Jerry was persistent, though. He called me on the phone. (My parents either listened in on another extension or stood close enough by to eavesdrop. We were eleven and twelve. What did they think we were doing? Planning a bank robbery?) He invited me to his house, and I went when I could. We were in different classes at school, but whenever there was an assembly I did my best to get as near to him as possible. And for two grades, glory hallelujah, we rode the same bus. Every day after school, we sat together holding hands, no best friend or parents to see or complain.
I didn't think he'd ever give me any presents again, but at Christmas in sixth grade, he slipped me a package. It contained his school picture, a wooden engraving of a deer he'd made himself, and a bottle of perfume. The perfume smelled like a mixture of pine and musk: very pretty and soft. The bottle was decorated with a cardinal perched on a snow-covered pine branch. I cherished that perfume so much that I didn't want to wear it and use it up. I opened it and sniffed it often, even after we'd broken up. I had those gifts until at least five years ago. I've moved several times since then, and my parents helped. I suspect they threw those things out, just as they did lots of my other possessions that meant nothing to them but held much sentimental value to me.
I spent two wintery Christmas breaks staring at the snow-filled forest between Jerry's house and mine, wondering what he was doing, if he was thinking of me, too. I often fell asleep at night to a popular song at the time, Cool Night, that made me think of him:
"On a cool night just let me hold you by the firelight
If it don't feel right you can go
On a cool night, let me love you"
How I wished I could curl up in Jerry's arms next to a warm fire. I wasn't yet capable of lust. All I wanted was to be next to him as often as possible. I did like kissing him. I didn't have the experience then to know he was gifted at kissing; now I can say, at twelve, he was a better kisser than most of the men I dated in college.
The end of Christmas Break was always a welcome relief. I would see Jerry everyday, if only for a few short minutes on the bus.
We broke up at the end of sixth grade. Yet Jerry remained a fixture in my life for many years. Maybe it was because he was my first, I'm not sure, but I've never quite shaken Jerry completely.
Posted by traversescribe
at 4:56 PM EST
